


Let's start with the end

by beanarie



Series: thoughts on being adopted [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Post-Avengers, Team Bonding, my obligatory steve navigating the 21st century fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So, Captain Steven 'America' Rogers, what are your plans for the next rest of your life?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's start with the end

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly written a very long time ago. Take heed: every single word of this has been Jossed. Thank you to my alpha readers from long ago, laria and starling. If there was someone else I'm missing, please stand up and be counted. The title comes from the song The War Was in Color, which was used in the most brilliant and inspiring [Steve vid](http://youtu.be/NDgHT-5SdAw) that has ever existed.

In the space of one afternoon, the Chitauri have been reduced from an invading army to just a lot of litter, mainly gray corpses and property damage. Loki has gone from being their general to being a prisoner in SHIELD HQ. And 42nd, one of the busiest streets in the world, is a literal disaster area, stripped of ninety-nine percent of its usual traffic.

The Hulk is still three times the size of most people, the color of broccoli, and not all that into communicating. And he shows no sign of changing.

Steve takes responsibility because that's what Steve does, and he would have even if the others hadn't scattered. For lack of any better ideas, he points the Hulk toward the streets to clear out cars and giant chunks of building. Making sure he doesn't do any further damage and that no innocent civilians get in his way (Or anyone else, for that matter. The big guy really doesn't like uniforms.) requires Steve's full attention. This is how he prefers it. Steve has always felt better when he's occupied. He can't imagine the Hulk enjoys being bored much himself.

After he gets his suit removed, Tony climbs on top of newsstands where he sits and makes snide comments in the Hulk's earshot. The Hulk lets pebbles and grit fly in his direction every so often. Tony just bats them away, grinning shamelessly.

Thor, freshly released from the medics, goes for the front end of a yellow cab.

"That rubble is spoken for," Tony says, using his hands as a megaphone. "Get over here and take a load off, Dagwood's Wife. You filled your quota on good deeds to the end of the month. Also didn't you get stabbed?"

Barton and Romanoff filter in after a while, looking as battered and dusty as Steve is beginning to feel. "No popcorn?" Romanoff says. She appears to be favoring one leg, though not as noticeably as Barton is, and Steve wonders how the mostly indestructible so-called god in their group ended up being the only one to get medical attention.

Thor grips the end of his hammer. "I have been persuaded against assisting," he grumbles, apparently afraid he looked like a jerk, sitting there on the curb watching Banner do all the heavy lifting.

"Stabbed," Tony yells, pointing.

Barton lets out a low whistle as the Hulk punches a bus into four equal sized pieces. "So how much does Hulk have to smash before he'll let Banner come back out to play?"

"Can't be much longer," Steve says, tired hope beginning to bleed through in his voice. From his perch, Tony hands down a bottle in a paper bag. Steve gives it a sniff and squints at him. "You're a bit of a degenerate, Stark." Tony bats his eyes like he's delighted someone noticed. Steve takes a slug of cold beer before dropping it to yell at a kid approaching the Hulk with one of those little camera phones.

Just a minute or so later, the Hulk drops onto a half-flattened convertible, shakes himself, and shrinks into a medium-sized scientist wearing ragged dungarees a half a dozen sizes too big for him. Tony tosses over a bag full of clothes. Banner dresses quickly and silently as Tony hops down to the street and approaches. While Steve mulls over falling to the curb next to Thor, Banner grips Tony's wrist, looking shell-shocked.

"You okay there, big man?" Tony asks. He makes a move like he's preparing to catch Banner if he should fall. A distinct possibility, given everything they just witnessed. Banner stays on his feet, at least long enough to pull Tony into a crushing hug. "Hey, buddy."

"Why were you were falling," Banner says roughly. 

" _Jesus_ ," Tony says. "Moron. You didn't do a single thing to cause that. The opposite, actually. Memory kind of spotty, huh?"

"Last thing I remember clearly is a giant, evil, armored manatee with wings."

"Yeah, you punched it in the face. We'll fill in the rest of the blanks later." Tony lets go of Banner and sweeps his gaze over the group. "That concludes our floorshow for the evening, kids," he says. "Now shawarma."

While Thor looks about ready to break into a run, Barton is hanging back. Steve guesses it must make Barton a little twitchy, leaving Loki to be guarded by others, unable to tell if he's still attempting his silver-tongued hocus-pocus, or if it's working.

Romanoff scratches at the base of a healing cut on her forehead, not saying a word.

The seconds tick by until finally Barton says, "Fifteen minutes can't do much harm."

~

Shawarma, as it turns out, has a lot of things going for it. Taste-wise it beats the hell out of MREs, and it has this magical ability to quiet everything down. There's still a commotion coming in from the street, made all the more evident because the windows are all shattered. Even inside there's the regular scrape of the owner's broom and the occasional zoom of the vacuum cleaner. But the team, that jerry-rigged collection of complicated, headstrong individuals, is universally too concerned with refueling to make sarcastic asides or pick each other apart. It's exactly what Steve needed.

Then Barton takes his foot off of Romanoff's seat and rises, nodding at the general table. "Thanks for dinner," he says. The only clock in the place is in pieces, but Steve is willing to bet it's between thirteen and seventeen minutes from the time they walked in.

"Yeah, no problem," replies Tony, sketching out a lazy salute that Steve finds obnoxious in a distantly objective sort of way. But it gets a smile out of Barton.

Romanoff shakes Steve's hand before getting to her feet as well. "We'll be in touch," she says to him.

"That always sounds like a threat coming from you people," Tony mutters.

Romanoff turns her head a few degrees and smiles sweetly. Tony squirms in his seat. 

Banner's laughter is muffled by a mouthful of bread. She winks at him and walks out, her small but still-present hobble making Steve hope at least one of them considers the idea of seeing a medic today.

Thor follows before she's cleared the doorway, no doubt for the same reason as Barton. He leaves in a cloud of subdued but gracious and repeated thanks, toting a plastic "I <3 NY" bag full of whatever they had left in the kitchen. No one asks out loud, but Steve chooses to assume Thor got takeout because he knows he'll want more later, rather than because the planet-enslaving crazy person he calls a brother might be hungry.

Steve should absolutely be the next one to go, but there are a few things wrong with that notion. He didn't get orders for any of this, so they have no obligation to reconvene anywhere. The NYPD and the Johnny-Come-Lately national guard have taken over the cleanup. And Agent Coulson's death is not only the loss of a good man, it leaves them with no handler. There's no one running after Steve demanding a debriefing. This was their mission, their "war". Well, it's over and now, Steve is back to not having a purpose.

Banner makes a noise. "Your thoughts are getting louder. They're starting to give me a headache." It's instantly clear that the words aren't directed at Steve. In this form, Banner has been almost unfailingly respectful to all the members of the team, with one exception.

"You know, they got dollar pizza across the street," Tony says. "It's not even half bad. The R&D interns love it because they get to eat like kings for pocket change. I maybe steal a slice from them sometimes."

"Have you turned bulimic?" Banner's smile is a little tight around the eyes. He knows where Tony's going with this, but he wants to pretend he doesn't. "That... makes a certain type of sense, actually. You're the kind of person would have loved Ancient Rome. I've always thought that."

"It's just Betty made it sound like after your grr time, you need, you know, _more_ than regular people. And-"

"You've spoken to Betty?" Banner asks, resigned.

"What? Never." Tony throws a balled up napkin in the trash. Two points. "It's not like I give a shit."

Banner gets up to use the restroom with a wordless grunt and Tony turns the spotlight of his attention on to Steve. "Penny for your thoughts, pensive man. Though don't get too excited. You probably used to be able to get half a dozen apples for that, but now we only use them in shoes that no one even really wears any more."

"You were so convinced he'd show," Steve says in a low voice. "And that it'd be a good thing for us."

"Look, I may have technically just made the Hulk's acquaintance? But I know Bruce. No matter what happens, ever--alien invasion, evil twins, sucked through a space-time continuum rip into a parallel universe, what have you--he'll choose to do the right thing. He's not a monster, in any iteration. That isn't him."

The conviction in Tony's words leaves Steve a little breathless. It wasn't too long ago that he had that much faith in someone. 

Banner returns, laden with two more baskets of shawarma and three times the normal serving of pita bread. Tony does a drum-beat on the table.

"So, Captain Steven 'America' Rogers, what are your plans for the next rest of your life?"

~

Steve declines Tony's offer to spend the night in Stark Tower ("What? Quit being ridiculous. I can't even tell you how many floors this building has. Trust me, I can spare a futon without hurting for space."). The next morning he wakes up before the sun rises, returns to Manhattan to watch the Asgardians depart in a flash of brilliant blue light, and takes off on his motorcycle, Southward bound.

He stops at Arlington Cemetery, a sprawling, serene piece of land that feels miles from the rest of civilization. One by one, he finds the names and he tells them things he would have told them if he'd known he wouldn't get another chance. He goes on to what he would tell them if they were still around today. No one knew him like they did. He doesn't have anywhere else to take stories of his new uniform, alien infestations, and a waitress with a friendly smile and white sneakers.

There's one grave he'd had no choice but to save for last. 

"Buck," he starts, and gets no further. It's almost funny. Seventy years, and he still isn't ready. 

So he sits. He tells himself there's no shame in sitting. 

After three days he returns to Brooklyn and his empty apartment, but he feels a little bit lighter. Less burdened. The thought occurs that he should go to England; not all of his ghosts are actually dead. But he isn't ready for that, either. 

There are three messages on the phone Tony had pressed into his hand at Central Park. Steve snorts when he sees that all of them are from the man himself.

 _Why do I get the feeling you stuffed this very expensive, very useful machine in the bottom of your bag and completely forgot about it?_ Tony's recorded voice asks.

"Could be because it's true," Steve says idly, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. The rest of the message is interrupted when the phone begins to ring. The screen states that the number is blocked.

Purely for the novelty of it, Steve pushes the little green receiver button.

"Nice trip?" asks Director Fury.

"Wouldn't call it nice." Steve sorts through a stack of mail. Ad, ad, credit card application. "More necessary than anything else. Overdue, certainly."

"Yeah, I can understand that." There's a pause. "Listen, there's someone you should meet. You'll like him."

"You think so, sir?"

"Oh, yeah. First thing I thought when I met you? 'Shit, it's the white Sam Wilson.'"

~

Maria Hill is waiting outside when he gets downstairs. 

"Care to tell me what's going on, ma'am?" Steve asks, though he waits until he's in the car to say anything.

"There's more to SHIELD than Phase Two, Captain," Hill says as she adjusts her rear-view mirror. "We wanted to make sure you knew that before you went burning any bridges between us."

The car stops in front of an old airplane hangar in view of the East River. A keycard swipe and thumbprint verification later, Steve is staring at the inside of a giant sports arena. 

"Welcome to our Northeastern Physical Training Facility," Hill says.

Steve follows her to the edge of the action to watch a young man running the track at top speed. He's around the same age Steve was before the ice, maybe a few years older, and he's dressed the same as everyone around him, in black shorts and tank top emblazoned with the SHIELD logo.

"Five months ago," Hill begins, "a group not unlike your old buddies at HYDRA kidnapped thirteen adults from a housing project in Washington Heights. They thought it would be a good source of subjects for their experiments, assuming no one would look too hard for them. Of the four we managed to rescue, Sam here is everybody's favorite."

"Not yours?" he asks.

Hill snorts. "No contest. Bonita Juarez has a knack for pulling out Jiu Jitsu holds that even I didn't know about. And she makes flan from scratch. I'd submit to bamboo under my fingernails for that woman."

Steve watches as Sam passes easily over four hurdles and then five.

"Hell of it was," she continues. "He didn't even live in that building. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You see, Sam was a social worker. He was doing a home visit for one of the families the city paid him to try and hold together."

" _Was_ a social worker," Steve repeats.

After a running start of a few seconds, Sam launches into the air, sailing over the obstacle course and landing neatly on the other side. Hill's mouth turns upward. "His captors left him with a few... changes. We convinced him SHIELD would help him put them to good use." She waves him over.

Sam takes a few seconds to jog up to them. "AD Hill, ma'am," he says in greeting. "All right, what's your guess?"

"I never get this," Hill mutters. "Fine. Um, fifty-six. Am I close?"

A grin breaks out on his face and Sam shakes his head. "Maya's the only one who got within shooting distance, if it helps. And she cheated."

"That looked like about thirty yards to me," Steve says, offering his hand. "Hi. Steve Rogers."

"Yes, sir. I know who you are, Captain." Sam's grip is solid, unhesitating. "It's an honor. Sam Wilson."

"We weren't talking about the jump," Hill says.

"What was it about then?" Steve asks.

"The pigeons roosting inside the roof. There are eighty-nine," Sam says. He raises a finger, his eyes flick upward for a second, and he smiles a little. "Eighty-five now. Four flew away."

~

Tony leaves voicemail messages once or twice a week. He rambles, makes occasional comments off to the side to other people, himself, or his robots, and sometimes cuts off before getting to the point. It's strangely comforting.

When Steve agrees to meet Tony for dinner one night, Stark has a few new accessories.

"I'm sure there's a story there," Steve says, glancing at the cast on Tony's right leg.

"Not so much, actually." Tony screws up his face, looking disgusted with himself. Steve raises an eyebrow and Tony throws up his hands. "I slipped in the shower, okay? The fall itself was pretty spectacular, at least. Hey," he says, as someone joins them at the table. "You remember my friend, Gun-show."

Steve exchanges nods with Barton. He doesn't waste time trying to figure out the nickname. It makes no sense-- he's never seen Barton use a gun--but that's true of most of the things Tony says. "So we've got a small reunion," he says, pleased but puzzled by Barton's presence. That is, until he notices Barton's practiced casual demeanor, and the subtle yet unmistakable way his eyes sweep over the exits and the windows every few seconds. Barton is on the clock.

~

"This place is great, don't you think?"

Steve lifts his head to see Romanoff, clad in the official SHIELD gym uniform with her hair pulled back, standing on the bleachers in front of him. He'd spied her earlier in the day, sometime before he'd taken a breather off to the side with his sketchpad. "Starting to prefer it to my old gym," he admits. The East River facility has quickly turned into one of Steve's favorite places to spend a few hours. No one expects anything from him here, and after the first two or three visits, the regulars stopped reacting to his presence. He's become one of them.

Romanoff just nods. SHIELD's ways of gathering and spreading intelligence aren't new to him. She of course knows all about the hours he spent murdering innocent punching bags. "Can I see?" she asks, indicating his sketch. After he places the pad in her hands, her lips curl into a smile. "I know this guy with the accordion. He plays in the subway under Bryant Park."

"He does an incredible rendition of the Godfather theme," Steve says. 

"You haven't seen that," she says, amused. 

"Went through all three in one day," he corrects her. About a week after Loki's failed invasion, Steve got his hands on a list, 1001 Movies To See Before You Die. He's been working his way through ever since. Some of them he'd seen already. Some don't sound like anything he'd be interested in, but he's determined to cross them all off.

"Race me?" Natasha says, tilting her head toward the track.

He reclaims the sketch pad and places it on the bleachers next to him. "Cheating encouraged, right?" 

Her smile widens to a grin. 

~

Steve spends a surreal morning being interviewed for television by two incredibly cheerful women who keep talking over each other and sipping from wine glasses while he's answering their questions. They go on about his rear-end for a very long time. He leaves the studio in a bewildered haze and finds himself walking in the general direction of Stark Tower. 

"Hell, yeah," Tony says when he calls. "Come on up. We'll hang."

When Steve gets out of the elevator, Tony is alone on the couch, the remains of at least one science project spread out on the coffee table in front of him.

"No babysitter?" Steve asks.

Tony waves at the air and goes back to snipping sections from a spool of copper wire. "Nah, Clint had stuff. I said I'd be a good boy and not go anywhere. Super magnanimous of me, as I am a grown man, albeit one performing at slightly less than full capacity, and I am more than capable of navigating the world outside my door, even if the Iron Man suit doesn't fit over my cast, and certain people in my life have forbidden me from trying to build one that does." He huffs out an annoyed breath. "But I don't want to inadvertently fuck anything up for the guy. Think they're gonna reinstate his field status soon. I jeopardize that, I'm _pretty_ sure he'd kill me."

Well, that explains how one of the most skilled covert agents in the country got demoted to bodyguard duty. "I was wondering about that," Steve says.

"Yeah, they had him good and mired in reevaluation quicksand after the mind-whammy that caused him to kill a dozen or two of his colleagues, you know? He was approved for milk-runs, but not the whole magilla. After, uh." Tony taps his plaster-coated foot against the table leg twice. "I told them I'd accept a shadow, but only if they made it Barton. They like it because we're literally keeping an eye on each other. I have to do reports on him and everything. It's kind of a pain in the ass, to be frank."

"Tony Stark, martyr and humanitarian." A Grace Kelly type with reddish-blonde hair enters the room. Steve recognizes her instantly from Tony's SHIELD file.

"Pepper," Tony cries. She sinks down next to him and they share a quick kiss on the lips. "Hey, why are you awake right now? You should be jet-lagged out of your mind."

"What can I say?" She stretches elegantly, lengthening her upper body from her stomach to the tips of her fingers. "I'm not."

"I didn't actually build you, did I? Because if someone can swing a robot this advanced, then-"

"Hello," Miss Potts says, smiling at Steve. "I'm sorry. I should get up and greet you properly, but this couch..."

"Ha! You're looped. Admit it." Tony pokes her in the side. She laughs and doesn't squirm away. "And you've had a few. I know how you like your international flights, comfy and tasting of Merlot."

"Fine, I don't even care. You're right." She snuggles into his shoulder, yawning. "I'm not going back to bed, though. I have, like, three hundred sixty-seven meetings in the morning. Today I'm going to snap my circadian rhythms back into place."

"Good plan. No way that could fail." Tony pats her on the head. "Let's order in. What do you feel like, Steve? Oh, Pep. This is Steve Rogers. You probably know him from those times he saved humanity. And Steve, this is Pepper Potts. She's saved... well, me, more than once, I think. I reward her with sex and also my company."

"I love when you frame things in cost-benefit analysis," she stage-whispers into his ear.

He grins at her. "People think just because you're more normal than I am, you're not completely twisted in your own right. That tickles me to no end."

Steve shifts his weight, and a board creaks under his foot.

They pull apart, Miss Potts's face flushing bright red. "Potts," Tony says, clicking his tongue.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Miss Potts tries to stifle a burst of self-conscious laughter, without much success. "It's really lovely to meet you, Steve. I've heard about you from so many different sources. So wonderful to finally have firsthand information."

They lean back against the couch side-by-side, regarding him. "Do you think he likes Thai?" Tony asks.

"Who doesn't like Thai?" she replies.

"I'm willing to try it out," Steve says gamely.

~

"I think I'm about done with running around in a circle," Sam says.

He comes to a stop at the bleachers a few seconds behind Steve and drains a water bottle in two long gulps. "Sounds so exciting on paper, but in real-life application it just doesn't translate well. You know what I'm saying?"

"Do you want to take a break?" Steve asks. "I've been meaning to check out this museum on an aircraft carrier. The Intrepid?"

He looks around at the recruits scrambling up the climbing wall, the seasoned agents testing each other at the obstacle course, and he nods. "Yeah, let's get out of here."

"Someone we should notify?" Steve asks as they start for the locker rooms.

"No, my next session with the counselor isn't until Thursday. They bumped me down from daily appointments to twice a week. Once a week now."

This is all sounding a little familiar to Steve. "Nice of them," he says.

"Wasn't it?" Sam shakes his head. "And every month or so they give me a new guy, I guess because each successive one gets fed up with me telling them I'm okay and actually meaning it." For the first time since Steve met him, Sam looks irritated. "Those weeks were the worst of my life, I won't pretend they weren't. But I'm not there anymore. I've always been good at moving on; it's a skill I picked up early." The door of his locker closes with a slam. "They just don't seem to want to let me."

~ 

Fury gives Steve a measuring look and walks away from the door. "You've got until I finish my lunch. And you better be grateful; it's more than I'd give almost anyone else."

Fury is exactly the sort of person who would eat a sandwich at his desk at four pm and call it lunch. Unsurprised, Steve nods shortly and takes a seat. "Why was Sam Wilson never placed in the field?"

"Sam and the others, we didn't exactly recruit them out of college." Fury wipes mayo off his hand with a napkin. "They had to grow into their abilities before they could be trusted in combat situations."

"The same way Bruce Banner earned your trust?" 

"Banner was never supposed to be on the table."

Steve nearly rolls his eyes, an urge he immediately blames on Tony.

"Anyway." Fury wads up the waxed paper and stuffs it into a brown bag. "Sam needs guidance. The man is not a soldier; he doesn't have the instinct. Most of my people don't have the patience to deal with that."

"That wouldn't be why you introduced us, would it, sir?"

Fury holds the bag of chips in his hand, hesitating before opening it. "Why? You have any ideas?"

~

Steve had known Tony wouldn't be thrilled about his proposed new hobby. Now everyone at the little outdoor bistro knows it, too.

"You are being blatantly manipulated. To your _face_. Their organization has one decent human being in its employ? So what?"

Still chewing, Barton looks up from his plate to favor Tony with a bland expression.

"Please, Miss Everdeen," Tony huffs. "You know this better than I do."

Barton shrugs, a tiny lift of his shoulders, and takes a gulp from his soda pop.

"I'm going to work with him," Steve says. "SHIELD has this good man who wants to help, and they've got him spinning his wheels like a hamster in a cage. He deserves better."

"I think you both do." Ignoring Tony's almost betrayed stare, Clint clinks his glass against Steve's. "Cheers." 

"On your head be it," Tony proclaims, before doing the same.

~

Fury says they'll be taking care of mid-level threats. Nothing involving bad guys of Loki or Schmidt's caliber, but still somehow out of the league of the NYPD.

Their first mission is to track a man who appears to be stockpiling radioactive materials for a reason no one can pin down. All they know is that he worked in a handful of labs under different names. SHIELD is especially worried now, since he hasn't popped up in a few days.

Hill ends the briefing with, "Stop by Stark Tower. Our friend has some equipment that should help narrow your search."

From the lobby they're directed to the twenty-second floor, where they are greeted by Banner in a lab coat. 

"Dr. Banner," Steve says, surprised. "Nice to see you stuck around."

"Nice to have somewhere to stick around," Banner replies. He's less ill at ease than he was on the Helicarrier, almost like he belongs here. "Tony had to go to DC for a thing, but I've got your tracker here and I can show you gentlemen how to use it."

"I'm glad I got the opportunity to meet you, sir," Sam says. "I'd love to talk about your recent work."

"Would you?" Banner asks, bemused. He probably doesn't often come across people who call him sir out of respect rather than fear.

Sam nods. "I'm told you were working to stamp out tuberculosis clusters in South Asia?"

"Oh. Well, my efforts weren't nearly that organized. I helped treat a few stragglers, people who didn't trust or didn't have access to the real doctors. That was all."

Sam launches into a story about an immigrant family he dealt with in the Bronx. Banner counters with an anecdote of his own. Their back and forth lasts for a good few minutes, during which Steve nods along. They don't need to hear about handkerchiefs dotted with blood and stuffed into wastebaskets, or coughing so loud it would wake a kid up in the middle of the night. He doesn't have much to contribute to the conversation. 

After a while, Banner's eyes fall on Steve and he cuts himself off. "Let's, uh, let's get you that tracker."

As they're leaving, Banner clears his throat and Steve lets Sam carry the box containing their new toy a few steps ahead of him.

"That's how your mother died, wasn't it?" Banner asks quietly. "TB?"

"Yeah." When it comes to Steve and his life, _everyone knows everything_. But he's strangely okay with that in this instance. With that white lab coat, glasses sticking out of his breast pocket, the similarities between him and Erskine are especially hard to ignore. Steve blows out a breath. "It's good to know the disease is mostly gone. Here in the US, at least."

Bruce shakes his hand. "Good luck with your bad guy, Steve."

"Don't suppose I could call you if we end up needing some assistance?"

"If given a choice between letting some wing-nut irradiate the water supply and losing my mind for a few hours, I guess..." Bruce shrugs, smiling slightly. "You do know where to find me."

~

Steve lives on the fifth floor of a building with an elevator that broke years ago. For that reason, it isn't until Tony loses the cast and heals up completely that he's able to visit for the first time.

Steve doesn't regret the delay very much when Tony proclaims, "Wow, what a depressing piece of shit. It's even the appropriate color."

"Says the guy who's never lived in a place that didn't have at least one chandelier," Steve volleys back. "You don't see things the way most of the world does, Stark."

"You're forgetting the three months in a cave." And Steve feels lower than a snail until Tony continues with, "Over this, I might choose the cave, honestly." He looks out the window at the sound of a passing garbage truck. "What subway line is this even on?" His eyes widen with something like dawning horror. "Oh my God, it's the D line, isn't it? Steve, they haven't updated those trains since I was a kid. This was probably all part of some orchestrated effort to 'ease you into things', but really it's just-"

"Depressing." Steve takes two Cokes out of the fridge and hands one to Tony. "I get it. You don't have to draw me a picture." 

"Move into the tower," Tony says. "Come on. I've got Clint in there now. He just kept leaving his arrows and wife-beaters behind until we both figured he might as well bunk there when he's in New York. And Bruce has been there pretty much full-time since the whole Loki-failing-to-take-over-the-world deal."

"Tony-"

"Steve." Tony stands very close and grabs Steve's arms. "Haven't you always wanted a superhero frat house of your very own?" He backs away, grabbing his Coke off the table and taking a drink. "Don't lie, you know you have. And we won't even make you put on a chicken suit and deliver singing telegrams to all the high-ranking members of SHIELD." Tony pauses as Steve only stares at him. "Oh. Hazing? You know, with the- Never mind. We need to get you a copy of Animal House. Start packing, boyo. I'm telling JARVIS to cancel your lease as of today."

Steve knows he has the option to say no. Despite what people say about him, Tony must hear the word all the time, and he's perfectly aware that sometimes he has to accept it.

It's just that Steve doesn't want to. Say no, that is.

~

One Tuesday, Steve happens to mention during a discussion about first cars that he never actually had one. 

"Well, that's easily fixed," Tony says, and he bites a slice of bacon in half.

"Don't remember saying it was a problem." Steve makes his way to the fridge to grab the makings of a sandwich. Tony is eating breakfast because he just emerged from his lab and he decided that there's still morning enough for scrambled eggs and bacon. Steve had beans on toast five hours ago and oatmeal, fruit and breakfast burrito two and a half hours ago. For him, it is indisputably lunch-time.

"What kind do you want? Doesn't even matter, I'm sure the dealer would practically throw it at you. 'Captain America drives my car.' You can't buy publicity like that. Help me out here, big man."

Bruce is hunched over his tablet, running through a series of diagrams. "Some people enter contests where they have to stand near a new car and touch it with some part of their body," he murmurs, sliding his thumb down one side of the gadget. "It can take days to whittle the field down to one winner." He looks up, hooking a finger around the nose-piece of his glasses so he can peer over them. "But Steve, to get one yourself, you most likely would just have to... show up." 

"I'm fine with the motorcycle." Steve lays out four slices of bread, along with mayo, turkey, and tomatoes. "I like the motorcycle."

"You know how to operate the motorcycle," Tony concludes. 

Steve steals four slices of bacon from Tony's pan. "I could figure it out if I wanted to. You know I flew a plane once?"

That Sunday afternoon, Steve is changing his clothes after returning from Sam's church and Clint knocks on his door. "Driving lessons. Everybody on the bus." 

There is no bus. Only a silver sedan that Clint drives to the parking lot surrounding Citifield where the Mets play. Steve's been once, during a recent subway series game. He isn't invested in the Mets. It wouldn't feel right, transferring his loyalty like that. The Dodgers may have up and left, but that didn't turn him into a guy from Queens. 

As they switch seats, Clint says, "Normally I really wouldn't care about letting a newish(?) driver take the wheel on a major street. But I've noticed you're kind of into the rules."

"Some of them aren't so bad," Steve agrees.

As Steve had predicted, he picks up driving fairly quickly. He still remembers which pedal does what, what the steering wheel is for, and how to use the mirrors. 

"Some families in my neighborhood shared cars. I didn't really have one of those, but I had friends. I rode places sometimes," he says as he backs into a space. Both he and Clint are more inclined to contribute to silence than break it, but sometimes conversation isn't a bad thing. "And I drove a jeep once or twice in the army. Wasn't all that hard, but cars were easier to parse then."

"Cut the wheel a little more," Clint says, and Steve does. "I started driving when I was eleven. That's how I got to be your teacher. No one else has my breadth of experience."

"That's really young. Did you grow up on a farm?"

"Yeah, no." He gives Steve a funny look. "You saw my file."

"Starts with your, uh..." Steve can only think _Armed robbery._ _Assaulting a police officer._ _Burglary._

"What?"

"Criminal record."

Clint smiles a little to himself. "Wow, I didn't start getting caught until I was nineteen. He kept it all locked down. Huh."

"Who did?"

"Coulson," Clint replies. "Had to be. I mean, he was the only one I told on the record. Him and a couple of SHIELD shrinks. And he outranked all of them."

"Why do you think he did that?" Steve asks, instead of _What did he keep out of your file?_

"I asked him to and he said he would," Clint admits. "Never believed him, though. It's not the sort of thing I could have called him on." Clearly that isn't true. Clint knows a lot about using computers to get information he shouldn't have access to. Steve suspects he chose not to look. As long as he didn't confirm that Coulson had let him down, he could keep the option open that he hadn't.

"You sound like Tony now," Steve points out.

"Yeah, but my trust issues were with everyone, not just with SHIELD. Fourteen years ago, I was kind of a wild animal." Clint smirks. "I like to think I was less feral than Natasha was when I found her, but it probably wasn't by much."

~

"Speaking of Natasha," Steve says, as he spreads sour cream on his potato pancakes. "She moving in any time soon?"

"Working on it." Clint wipes beer foam from his upper lip, smiling a little. "Barracks-style living, it appeals to her in a way that a luxury high-rise wouldn't."

"Penance?" Steve says. He watched the footage of everything leading up to the disaster on the Helicarrier. She got Loki to reveal his plans by opening the door on her own weaknesses. It was a risky play that Steve respects completely, though everyone with a certain clearance level has now seen her laid bare by that murdering con artist.

"Something like that." Clint dunks three fries in a puddle of ketchup and eats them all at once. "But I'm wearing her down. Last time I saw her, I told her nobody's impressed by her indie mindset." He glances at Steve. "That she's holding out just to prove how different and special she is."

"There's a name for that?" Steve asks. Clint laughs, loud enough to make it over the din of the restaurant. Steve has never seen him do that before.

~

This doesn't happen often, all of them together in the same place. Once a month, if they're lucky. Steve has his missions with Sam and public relations events for the team. Clint is still called away by SHIELD quite a lot, even though news footage of the battle with the Chitauri made him more recognizable than he had been. On top of his countless projects and obligations, Tony sometimes patrols the skies in cooperation with Port Authority. And Bruce is always working, whether in the labs or out on what Tony's been calling "research rendezvous". 

Yet this Friday evening they watched one of the movies on Steve's list, a heist film with more profanity in it than actual words. It included a torture scene that won't be leaving his brain any time soon. Every once in a while, Steve catches himself brushing at the bottom of his ear with his shoulder. Tony had said that the director made about a half a dozen more films, each one more violent and clever than the last. 

Now they're a unified force, demolishing enough Korean to feed everyone on Flatbush Avenue. 

Natasha strolls into the kitchen like she's been there a thousand times before. There's a nasty cut on her cheek surrounded by a ring of black and blue that almost reaches her left eye.

Tony tosses her an icepack from the freezer and continues his earlier stated goal of going back to his workshop. "Someone get this woman some kimchee," he throws over his shoulder.

~

Alarms begin to sound around seven in the morning, pulling Steve out of his reading. 

"An unidentified flying object is on a collision course with this building," JARVIS says, and Steve knows every floor is getting the same message. "It should impact on the balcony level in ninety seconds."

Steve swaps out his biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. for his shield and runs upstairs. The elevators are all occupied, helping any workers in the building get out safely and quickly. One by one, Steve's team members join him.

When they reach the balcony only to have Tony call out, "Rhodey, you incredible dickhead" and give their would-be enemy a fist-pound, it's almost a let-down. 

Steve reminds himself that while there are a lot of bad guys who'd love to destroy the newly renamed Avengers Tower, there are also, occasionally, friends who just don't feel like using the front door. And sometimes those friends are sporting broken communication systems.

By mutual silent agreement, everyone leaves Tony to get his buddy out of the suit himself and they reassemble in the kitchen. Except for Clint, who takes the dark circles under his eyes to the elevator and returns to his suite. 

Steve throws some eggs in one pan and bacon in another, while Natasha fires up the coffee-maker. Bruce settles on a stool with a mighty yawn, scratching his head and buttoning his shirt. His hair looks like he stuck his finger in a light socket somewhere along the way. 

"Late night in the lab?" Steve asks, as Natasha hands Bruce a mug.

"Mm," he answers, yawning again. "Thanks, Natasha. Yeah, you know how it is. Once you get an idea, you have to get it all down, documented and tested out, before it disappears."

Steve nods, as does Natasha. Neither of them have a follow-up comment, but Bruce doesn't seem to mind. Once the food is ready, they settle around the kitchen table with their plates piled high.

The elevator dings, and the sound of good-natured bickering pokes a hole through the comfortable silence.

"Listen, I'm just saying. When it comes to the repulsors, a little bit can go a long way. You don't have to overload them all the time."

"Tony Stark is lecturing me on moderation. This is just, uh... What are the ways to tell if you're in a coma-dream instead of actual life?" While Tony stops in place, sputtering, Rhodes leaves him behind and smiles at the table. "Hey, Bruce. Good to see you."

"Jim, hi." Bruce stands up to shake his hand. "Wow, it's been a long time. How goes the patrolling over California?"

"Well, I won't say it's running _smoother_ with Hot Rod over there only coming out on the weekends, but-"

Tony steals a grape from the giant bowl of fruit salad on the counter and clears his throat loudly. "I'm all about free expression and that jazz, so say whatever you're feeling? But remember, I brought that armor into the world, and I can take it out."

"It's, uh, fine," Rhodes says, his eyes twinkling. "Just fine. A little lonely."

JARVIS pipes up with a message for Tony, who jogs off to the elevator, shouting, "Be right back."

"Will he?" Rhodes asks Bruce.

Bruce lifts one shoulder. "Stranger things have happened."

Only about ten minutes have gone by when Tony rejoins them in the kitchen. "Listen. Silversmith. JARVIS completed the diagnostics. It'll take a while, but I can fix everything with my completely under-appreciated super-brain and Bruce."

"My brain is rather pedestrian and mundane," Bruce informs everyone, smiling faintly, "Yet somehow fully appreciated."

"-Also here's me assuming you want to get out of here in as small a time-frame as possible?"

Rhodes eyes Tony steadily. "I do kind of have stuff to do."

"-Although Pepper is going to chop me into little pieces and set each one on fire because today is one of the eight and a half days a year she takes off from work. But you're family, and your needs take precedence over my well-being."

Natasha hides a smile behind her coffee mug.

"Is there a point to this?" Rhodes asks. "I can't always tell whether you're leading up to something or if it's just the usual self-directed verbal diarrhea."

Steve spits half a mouthful of eggs into his napkin. 

"Nice job," Tony says happily. "You just grossed out a national icon."

"Well, that's one to tell the grandkids," Rhodes says, dry as dust. "Sorry, man."

"Honest, I just swallowed wrong." Steve pushes his chair a few millimeters away from the table and fights back a disgusted shudder. _Verbal diarrhea_. 

Tony freezes in place, his eyes get really big, and his mouth curls into a smile. So, idea. Steve braces himself. "You're taking Pepper out for me!" he announces. "You, Flyboy, and you, Catsuit, and--not you, Normal-brain, you're with me--and _Spangles_. Surround her with enough warm bodies, she won't even notice I'm not there."

Rhodes nods slowly. "That logic is really sound."

"As much as something that has no substance whatsoever," Natasha agrees.

Bruce toasts Tony with a piece of bagel. "You're standing on phlogiston, Tony Stark." 

Steve makes a mental note to ask Bruce about it later.

~

Steve does not want to get involved. While he likes both Tony and Miss Potts, he has no right to get in the middle of their thorny relationship issues. He removes himself from the potentially hostile environment and takes a shower. 

Guilt kindly waits to creep in until he's toweling himself off. 

As Steve gets out of the elevator to the common areas, his hair combed but damp, Miss Potts is clutching her phone and threatening to go back into the office and write off the day and her boyfriend as a loss.

"Blame Rhodey," Tony says, hiding behind Bruce. "It's his fault for wanting to not die while he's in the suit. What kind of request is that, really. Selfish."

"Pepper." Bruce touches her arm. "Pepper. This is still your day." 

She looks down at her phone. "But I should really-"

"Go and have fun. I'll make sure he's done in time for dinner. Make it somewhere expensive."

Her irritated frown slowly softens to fond exasperation, and she smoothes the hair behind Bruce's ear. Then she twists around his back to tell Tony, "Tertulia. Seven o'clock."

"Nine?"

"Seven-thirty." She darts in for a fleeting kiss. "Go be productive."

"You complete me, Potts," Tony yells at her back.

She walks right up to Steve and takes his arm in hers. "Can we go? Are you ready? If I stay here any longer, I'll probably maim him in some way, and that would likely set off his army of internet admirers."

"I-" Steve sweeps his gaze over the room, stopping at Rhodes on the couch, his head tipped back and his eyes closed, dead to the world. God only knows where he came from, and what he was doing that messed up his armor that badly. Natasha is completely MIA. "Sure. Do you like the zoo? I haven't been since the thirties."

In the car, just the two of them, it becomes painfully obvious that they don't know each other as well as two people who share the same space probably should. A few awkward attempts at small talk have Miss Potts's cheeks flushing with chagrin.

"I'm sorry," she says. "The only people I ever deal with are colleagues, underlings, or Tony. I'm a little out of practice."

To him that sounds both lonely and exhausting, but she doesn't seem unhappy. Just a little tired. Definitely in need of a break. "Don't feel like you have to keep me entertained," Steve says gently. "I don't actually mind the quiet."

Her smile is incandescent. As he ducks his head, Pepper reaches out and squeezes his hand. "You're a keeper, Steve Rogers."

A few blocks later, she frowns out the window and then turns to him. "Steve? Did you really want to go to zoo?" Steve shrugs. "Only that Tony told me once you can drive, but you don't have a car. We could go shopping instead?"

Steve sits up a little straighter, realizing he would like that very much. "If you're okay with it, ma'am," he says.

"Pepper," she says.

"Pepper," he echoes, and he grins.


End file.
